President Joe Biden sped up a mandate for Chicago to replace its more than 400,000 lead service lines, cutting in half the deadline — and now requiring that the city get the job done in about 20 years.
The estimated cost is more than $14 billion, and city officials say there’s not enough money to pay for the replacements in that amount of time, even as they acknowledge the brain-damaging effect that lead has on children.
Johnson is struggling to close a $223 million budget gap by the end of the year and erase a nearly $1 billion shortfall in next year’s budget.
“It’s like another unfunded mandate,” said South Side Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), adding there is “no possible way” Chicago can comply with such an “unrealistic” demand.
The city has known for years that lead service lines that connect city water mains to home piping are a public health hazard, and that the lines need to be fully removed, especially in low-income communities of color where there are a high number of lead pipes.
The Chicago mandate is part of a national plan to remove harmful lead pipes.
The city of Chicago required all new construction to include the lead lines through 1986, the year a federal law banned them due to their risk to health.
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That former city requirement helps explain why Chicago has more lead service lines than any other city in the nation. Even with the new edict, Biden is still giving Chicago twice as long as most big cities to replace toxic pipes.
Almost a year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would lend Chicago $336 million to help fix the problem. That money, however, was expected to replace about 30,000 lines. Chicago needs more federal money, Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) said.
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“We can’t afford it on our own,” he said.
Villegas also praised Biden for proposing to move more aggressively than the city has under Johnson or his predecessors.
“It’s bananas that there isn’t this sense of urgency,” Villegas said.
Erik Olson, a senior strategist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, said Chicago will need to be more assertive about going after federal money, which is funneled through Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration.
“It requires political will to make this happen,” Olson said. “Honestly, they just have to figure out a way to pay for this.”
Olson noted that other big cities are figuring out their own plans.
A spokeswoman for Pritzker’s environmental agency in charge of the federal money did not respond to requests for comment.
The cost is estimated by the city to break down to more than $700 million a year starting in 2027.
“While we have received some funding, you’re talking about a program that’s gonna be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Johnson’s Chief Operating Officer John Roberson told the Sun-Times.
The city budgeted $169 million this year to replace about 5,100 lead service lines, said Randy Conner, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management.
“We will continue to work with our partners in turning over every rock to identify resources for this work,” Conner said in a statement.
A city water rate increase to pay for pipe replacement is off the table, said Villegas, the chairman of the City Council Committee on Economic and Capital Development.
“Given the cost of water right now and the taxes that are on it, I would say that’s probably a non-starter,” he said.
